KROEBER, Alfred L.

KROEBER, Alfred Louis. Hoboken, NJ 11.6.1876 — Paris 9.10.1960. U.S. Cultural Anthropologist and Linguist. Son of German immigrants, Florence Kr. and Anna Müller, grew up in New York City. Studies at Columbia College (B.A. 1896 in English, M.A. 1897 in Romantic drama). PG studies of anthropology under Franz Boas at Columbia University, Ph.D. 1901. Instructor (1901), Assistant Professor (1906), Associate Professor (1911) amd from 1919 Professor of Anthropology at University of California, Berkeley, emeritus 1946, then visiting Professor at several U.S. universities. In 1925-46 also Director of Anthropological Museum of U.C. Fieldwork in the Western states of the U.S.A. Married 1906 Henriette Rothschild (d. 1913) and 1926 Theodora Kracaw Brown (1897–1979), an anthropologist, with whom he had one son and one daughter (the well-known science fiction writer Ursula Kroeber Le Guin, 1929–2018).

Publications: Diss. 1901 on decorative symbolism of Arapahos.

– Much on anthropology, mainly on American Indians, also on Central and South American archaeology.

– With Ch. D. Chrétien: “Quantitative Classification of Indo-European Languages”, Language 13, 1937, 83-103.

– “Statistics, Indo-European, and Taxonomy”, Language 36, 1960, 1-21.

Sources: *Dell Hymes, Language 37, 1961, 1-28; *Th. Kroeber (his widow), A.K.: A Personal Configuration. 1970; *J.H. Steward, American Anthropologist 63, 1961, 1038-1087; Wikipedia with photo.

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